THE IMPERIAL RELATION

"And there is another great piece of legislation which awaits and should receive the sanction of the Senate I mean the bill which gives a larger measure of self-government to the people of the Philippines. How better, in this time of anxious questioning and perplexed policy, could we show our confidence in the principles of liberty, as the source as well as the expression of life, how better could we demonstrate our own self-possession and steadfastness in the courses of justice and disinterestedness than by thus going calmly forward to fulfill our promises to a dependent people, who will look more anxiously than ever to see whether we have indeed the liberality, the unselfishness, the courage, the faith, we have boasted and professed. I can not believe that the Senate will let this great measure of constructive justice await the action of another Congress."-WOODROW WILSON, December, 1914.

THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK

FREQUENTLY in speaking about Ireland to

Americans I have discovered that the total effect of lively assertion is to leave them confused and bored. It is largely with the confused and the bored in mind that this book is written. There are many eloquent and thrilling books on Ireland. The national struggle of the Irish people is a fit subject

for warm and persuasive writing. But the desirable object at present seems to me to place Ireland in the clear light where facts can be fairly considered. My aim in this book is to examine the condition of Ireland, to interpret its nationalism, to show the difficulty of its relation with England, to proceed from causes to consequences, and then to remedies. The reader may easily differ from me in the end. He may decide that I disagree with the Tory Englishman because I do not allow for the needs of the empire, or because the past is too much with us, or because I am a particularist in spite of myself. Whatever his verdict on these points, I shall have failed in my object if I have not improved his opportunity of judging the question for himself. According to any democratic or liberal criteria, I consider that Ireland has on its side the durable advocacy of the facts. But facts can never be seen in their relevance unless they are honestly respected, and my chief aim has been to have nationalism supply the incentive for writing rather than the evidence and the arguments submitted for the reader's judgment. Both Englishmen and Irishmen are solemnly involved in the responsibility for Ireland's condition, but it is simple futility to let English patriotism or Irish patriotism dictate the inquiry.

A judicial consideration does, in my opinion, lead to the severest conclusions in regard to the actual government of Ireland, organic as well as functional, present as well as past. I think that it can be proved that the men in power, Englishmen and Anglo-Irishmen, have as a rule failed in the first psychological essential of government, entrance into the genuine will of the governed. They have failed,

for the most part, because they have lacked true community of interest with Ireland and because they have never really chosen to share in the universe of native Irish discourse. Englishmen often willingly admit the "stupidities" and "blunders " of the past that arose from this policy; they have done this, point by point, for some hundreds of years. But it is invariably the offences of the past that the governing class is willing to confess, never the persisting relation from which these offences have unfailingly sprung and must unfailingly continue to spring. The offences of the living present are such, however, that, upholding my faith in the judicial method, I conceive passing sentence to be part of it. But while I look to the passing of sentence by fairminded men, whether they be Irish or English or American, it is only because such sentence, passed for the relief of a people, must involve a wholesome transfer of power, the essential preliminary to reconstruction. This is not the dictate of simple nationalism. If a writer's approach is unequivocally nationalistic, he is punitive, goaded by the remorseless passion of a Sicilian or a Kentuckian. This is wholly understandable since, as Justice O. W. Holmes has defined it, vengeance, not compensation, and vengeance on the offending thing, was the original object" of asserting liability. But, for my own part, I honestly distrust the retaliatory spirit, even when it is combined with the nationalistic principle. I am afraid of the encouragement that it offers to the egoism which sleeps so fitfully inside every nationalistic habit of mind. But apart from the Irishness of Ireland there is, as I believe, a problem of human liberation involved in Ireland,

and it is because of this that Ireland is bound to proclaim England's liability today. "The very considerations which judges most rarely mention, and always with apology, are the secret root from which the law draws all the juices of life," declares Justice Holmes. "I mean, of course, considerations of what is expedient for the community concerned.” These are the considerations, more pertinent than any desire to stone the offending ox, which make me believe it right that England and Anglo-Ireland be held fully and strictly and promptly accountable in regard to the Irish people.

CELT AND SAXON

Americans are frequently unable to reconcile the nationalistic Irishman's account of England with their own impression of the English race and even the British empire. Such Americans may like their Irishman, they may want to be hospitable to his emotions, but they cannot belie the admiration and respect they have long given to England. An Irishman may go to any length in defaming the English. He may quote Heine and Voltaire, argue hypocrisy and empire, display India and Egypt; but there is a firm substratum of respect and admiration that he cannot easily dislocate. It is only necessary to examine Emerson's English Traits to see how a wise New Englander really feels about Old England and the English. Of course one can find innumerable Americans who have used the English despitefully, as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge has done in his recollections, just as one can find a number of Americans who take the English as their superiors. The emo